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The Scotsman

The Last Supper
– an excerpt from Milan

Leonardo painted three of his masterpieces in Milan: the two versions of the mystery-laden Virgin of the
Rocks and the Last Supper. The former two are in London and the Louvre; the latter would have been in Paris
too, had the French been able to figure out a way to remove the wall.

Ever since the 14th century, it had been the fashion in Italy to paint a Cenacolo or scene of the Last Supper
on the walls of monastic refectories, and as the Dominicans at Santa Maria were special favourites of Lodovico
il Moro, he sent them his favourite artist to make their Cenacolo the last word on the subject. When Leonardo
unveiled his Last Supper (1494–98) it was immediately acclaimed as the greatest work of the greatest living
artist, a masterful psychological study, an instant caught in time, the apostles’ gestures of disbelief and
dismay captured almost photographically by one of the greatest students of human nature. In the 16th century,
Vasari wrote in his Lives of the Artists ‘In all the faces one can read the fearful question: who will betray
the Lord? And each expresses in his own way not only his love for Jesus, but also fear, anger and indeed
sorrow, because they cannot understand his words.’ According to Vasari, Leonardo left the portrait of Christ
purposely unfinished, believing himself unworthy to paint divinity; Judas, the isolated traitor, also posed a
problem, but the artist eventually was able to catch the expression of a man caught guiltily unawares but
still nefariously determined and unrepentant.

Unfortunately for posterity, damp was a problem even as Leonardo worked on the fresco and the
ever-­experimental genius was not content to use proper, established fresco technique (where the paint is
applied quickly to wet plaster) but painted with tempera on glue and plaster as if on wood, enabling him to
return over and over to achieve the subtlety of tone and depth he desired. Leonardo knew even as he painted
his masterpiece that it wouldn’t last, but the fact only stimulated his restless mind, which was fascinated
with the unfinished and the transitory. Almost ­immediately the moisture in the walls began its deadly work of
flaking off particles of paint.

Although it was considered a ‘lost work’ by the 17th century (in 1620 it was so dark that the Spaniards
unwittingly cut a doorway into its centre), various restorers have tried their hand at this most challenging
task. In the Second World War the refectory was massively damaged by a bomb, and the Last Supper was only
preserved thanks to piles of mattresses and other precautionary measures. In 1953, master restorer Mauro
Pelliccioli covered what remained of the work with a rock-hard protective shield of clear glue; by then, only
an estimated 20 per cent of what was visible was by Leonardo’s own hand. In 1977, the Ministry of Arts decided
to let Italy’s communications company Olivetti pay £3.5 million to make the Last Supper a showcase restoration
project. The leader of the project, Pinin Brambilla, was given the job of chipping off Pelliccioli’s
protective coating, cleansing the work of its previous restorations and repaintings, then stabilizing the wall
to prevent further damage, and finally painting in the gaps. In May 1999, when the last scaffolding was taken
down (the restoration took over five times as long as it took Leonardo to paint it), Brambilla’s work was
displayed to howls of fury by art critics around the world.

Italians for the most part have tried to hold their chins up (the then Minister for the Arts, Giovanna
Melandri, called it ‘the restoration of the century’), while one of the harshest critics, James Beck from the
Department of Art History at Columbia University, countered: ‘This woman has simply produced a new Brambilla.
What you have is a modern repainting of a work that was poorly conserved. It doesn't even have an echo of the
past. At least the older over-paintings were guided by Leonardo's work.’ Brambilla (who was quoted as saying
she communed daily with Leonardo’s ghost while working on the project) notoriously even went where the living
Leonardo feared to tread and put some finishing touches on Christ’s face.